ALDI - Chertsey, Surrey

09/06/2017
We have long been loyal fans of both Aldi and Lidl based on our extensive and positive German experience. We travelled to Feltham for several years, from Virginia Water, to shop at both stores, though generally opting more for the Lidl than the Aldi option. We were thrill with the opening a week ago of Aldi's Chertsey store, more or less on our doorstep. We did our first shop yesterday, to find ourselves very happy with first impressions. But our till and customer service experience was, to say the least, quite disappointing, verging on distressing. We are both slightly disabled pensioners, and at first were quite impressed with the check out assistant helping us to load the conveyor belt, but even then noting the absence of a friendly comment or even smile, though we did show our gratitude. We now think her motivation was less being helpful, but more of aggressively making us hurry up. Whilst scanning the goods, we were tested to the limit to keep up with her fast and far from friendly high throughput sleep. Both of us had great difficulty in clearing the small till area into our trolley. We had put a our wine bottles on the side of the counter in a bottle bag, and were Wally embarrassed and upset when one of us knocked it to the floor as we hastily tried to keep up the pace of filling our trolley bags. One bottle smashed and we were confronted with extremely unfriendly and unsympathetic cross looks, and absolutely no words of sympathy or anything like friendly concern by the cashier and one other who came over (we thought to be helpful, but no help or anything else was forthcoming). Yes, it was our fault to have knocked off the bottles and, yes, they had been cashed up so were clearly our property. So, we didn't attempt to argue that the one bottle should be replaced, and no offer was made. We were, to tell the truth, only to glad to get away! However, whatever the rights and wrongs, it was in stark contrast to our years of experience at Lidl, where a deciding factor in shopping more at Lidl than the Feltham Aldi was that Lidl's customers service and friendliness was exemplary. We had hoped that a new store would be staffed with highly motivated and friendly staff. Their only motivation in our one off experience was to speed till throughput regardless of the pressure placed on vulnerable customers. Reallly, a very very disappointing experienc